A new spring 2013 elective course, "Global Issues and Sustainability in India," is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the engineering and social-work schools. The short-term, cross-cultural Indian immersion experience offers three credits through the engineering school (EECS 342i) and the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (SASS 375i/575i).

The course will travel to India May 21 through June 4, 2013. Social-work students will team with engineering students to undertake projects such as energy, water and sanitation infrastructure.

Students will visit field sites, governmental and non-governmental institutions, and historical sites, and attend cultural events. A trip to the Taj Mahal is also included.

Eric Baer, Distinguished University Professor and Herbert Henry Dow Professor of Science and Engineering, recently was named an honorary professor of Beijing University for Chemical Technology (BUCT), a distinction considered the university’s highest academic honor.

The university recognized Baer for his landmark contributions to research and education, including his pioneering research in establishing the relationships between solid-state structure and properties of polymeric materials and their composites.

A sailor who won a silver medal at this summer’s London Paralympics describes in a new book how cutting-edge medical technology from the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center allowed her to resume an active life after being paralyzed 14 years ago.

Jennifer French’s On My Feet Again: My Journey Out of the Wheelchair Using Neurotechnology builds on a series of blogs she wrote in 2010 and 2011 while preparing for and undergoing surgery and, later, learning to use and live with a second-generation muscle-stimulation implant that enables her to stand and do rudimentary walking.

French, a native of North Royalton, Ohio, was one of the first to receive the technology in 1999. A snowboarding accident left her a paraplegic, but she trained hard with the system and was able to walk down the aisle and stand through her wedding ceremony.

Hey students: James Hale wants to hear from you. As president of the Undergraduate Student Government, Hale helped organize the State of the University Address, during which President Barbara R. Snyder reflected on the past year, shared plans for the future and answered questions from students.

To ensure his constituents’ voices were heard, Hale instated a new initiative this year: an online forum to which students could post questions for President Snyder to answer during her remarks. Questions posed on the forum ranged from housing to academic concerns—topics that weigh heavy on the minds of students.

Beyond noting students’ concerns at the State of the University Address, Hale wants to hear from undergraduate students personally, to find out how he can help improve campus.

Case Western Reserve University researchers have won a $1.2 million grant to develop technology for mass-producing flexible electronic devices at a whole new level of small.

As they’re devising new tools and techniques to make wires narrower than a particle of smoke, they’re also creating ways to build them in flexible materials and package the electronics in waterproofing layers of durable plastics.

The team of engineers, who specialize in different fields, ultimately aims to build flexible electronics that bend with the realities of life: Health-monitoring sensors that can be worn on or under the skin and foldable electronic devices as thin as a sheet of plastic wrap. And, further down the road, implantable nerve-stimulating electrodes that enable patients to regain control from paralysis or master a prosthetic limb.